


Quite Frequently Thrilled

by gin_eater



Series: Deep Sea Divers [4]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 06:17:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4128021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gin_eater/pseuds/gin_eater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ursula and Cruella meta away their evening in Gold's cabin whilst the others are off stalking loved ones and kidnapping children. The now deeply ironic little oneshot that led off this whole damn series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quite Frequently Thrilled

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted just after Enter the Dragon, when I was (very obviously) new to the show, so it's got pilot episode syndrome in that it's necessarily vague and slightly contradictory to how they expanded in my head over time.

Cruella hovered in front of one of the cabin’s south-facing windows, an expression of deep suspicion – one might almost say anxiety – etched into her gaunt features.

“Do you think my car’s all right?”

Seated in an old leather chair, with an even older leather-bound book in her lap, Ursula rolled her eyes.

“That’s what you’ve been mother-henning about at the window for the last ten minutes? Your car?”

“Who should I be mother-henning about?” Cruella asked, snapping the curtains shut and wheeling to face her. “Mal? _Rumpel?_ ”

“It’s just a _thing,_ Cruella.”

“Yes, it is. I very much like _things,_ and it is a _thing_ I like very much.”

Ursula snorted softly and returned to her book. “Believe me,” she muttered, “I know.”

“Oh, god, not this again. I thought we’d put the past behind us, darling? You know the old tune: water under bridges and bygones being themselves?”

“We did,” Ursula flatly agreed, turning a page.

“Then why the remark?”

Ursula waved a hand vaguely in the air. “Forget it. It just slipped out.”

Cruella huffed, unconvinced. “I can’t _believe_ you’re still bitter about that, after all this time.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, cultivating bitterness is kind of our _raison d'être._ ”

“Oh, ha.”

“Well, that damned Author apparently thinks so.”

“Hmph. An excellent if irritating point.” Cruella fingered the leash of diamonds around her neck, tightening and loosening the slipknot in broody contemplation. “I mean no wonder we’re never victorious. Happy endings are only for people with character development.”

Ursula paused in her reading. She looked up at Cruella, and closed her book.

“Do you really think that’s it?” she asked.

“Do I really think what’s it?”

“Do you think we always end up getting the shaft not because we’re ‘evil,’ per se, but because some basement-dwelling geek boy can’t be bothered to write us as anything more sympathetic than plot devices for his precious heroes to overcome?”

“You’re saying it’s not only the outcome he decides, but the means?”

Ursula shrugged. “It makes sense. Maybe the reason we’re stuck in this never-ending cycle of prematurely smug monologues and humiliating defeat is because he won’t allow us to grow beyond our resentment.”

“So he’s written us as emotionally – and physically, in Rumpel’s case – stunted cardboard cutouts of nefarious intention who, try as we might, will never achieve the sort of three-dimensional worldview required to eventually live out our days in contented prosperity?”

“Pretty much.”

Cruella scoffed. “Rubbish. I don’t buy it.”

Ursula raised an eyebrow. “And why not?”

“Because.” Cruella licked her lips, hesitating. She looked at Ursula for a long, unnervingly insecure moment, then huffed again, shook her head, and looked back toward the window. “Because it’s completely inaccurate. We’re just as capable of feeling everything those damned bloody heroes feel. No one on our level was born here. If we were crippled by our falls then it’s because we climbed so much higher than the others to begin with.”

“A balance of extremes?” Ursula asked.

Cruella shrugged. “Well, why not? We work just as hard, and against even greater odds. We persevere and fight just as tirelessly to achieve our goals – even more so, in fact, because we so rarely get to reach them. And who loves more fiercely than we do?” Her cheeks colored under their contouring, and she was quick to supply examples that weren’t currently in the room. "Regina and her ridiculous stable boy. Regina and _Mal._ Mal and her …“ A faraway look clouded her eyes, no doubt recalling the pain on their friend’s face when they returned to her the severed top half of the little clawed rattle Charming had pocketed like the two-bit thief he pretended he wasn’t. "You know, all across the animal kingdom, mothers will sacrifice their lives to protect their children. –Don’t get me wrong, the thought of being beholden to some puling little body-ravaging parasite is just …”

She shivered dramatically and pulled a face.

Ursula smirked.

“… but it’s not like I’m unfamiliar with the power of that bond.” Her gaze strayed to the heavy coat hanging neatly on the back of the cabin’s front door. “In countless species, mothers will defend their offspring to the death. And that self-righteous little nit and her empty-headed husband couldn’t even compromise. Mal took the first step and who knows what others might have followed it? Today’s cease-fire could be tomorrow’s peace treaty, and what better paving for a road like that than the common ground of nauseatingly pure and selfless parental love?

"But they’re all talk, heroes are, and somehow all of that gum-flapping never extends to actual negotiation, and when fate finally forces their desperate hand into doing something less than heroic, they somehow expect to get a free pass because they’re 'the good guys.’ It’s nonsense. It’s complete and utter nonsense, and whomever this 'Author’ is, I would sooner burn their books than have them rewrite mine if it meant my destiny would be decided according to my own bias and not that of a drivel-producing hypocrite with a god complex and an enchanted pen.”

Ursula blinked, a little surprised by the breadth and vehemence of the other witch’s rant. “And if our existence is dependent upon these books, what then? I know you’ve got a fetish for risky situations, but you’re not the suicidal type.”

Cruella folded her arms and slumped against the wall, her expression darkening.

“I don’t accept that.” She shook her head. “I didn’t acquire the skills I have because I relished the experience of someone else having control over _me._ ”

Not one to waste such a well-framed opportunity, Ursula’s tentacles shot out quick as arrows to coil around Cruella’s thin upper arms and pin her to the wall where she stood. Cruella startled, but the look on her face was more astonished than truly frightened.

“Oh, come now,” the sea witch teased, rising and sauntering towards her quarry with playful nonchalance. “You relish it just a little.”

Cruella struggled unsuccessfully to mask a smile with an intimidating glare.

“Well,” she primly conceded, “there’s a time and place for everything. The point remains, darling, that our actions are _re_ actions to circumstances we found intolerable. To things that were done to us. What we’re being punished for is having the strength to take matters into our own hands, rescue and revenge _ourselves_ from the injustices that befell us. If the Author really is all-powerful, we never would have got even this far. However many aces Rumpel thinks he has up his sleeve, it’s our capacity for disobedience that will be our greatest weapon in this fight. The Author may be able to rearrange the board, but he can’t move the pieces.”

Ursula was close enough now to feel Cruella’s breath on her face, already coming quick and a little shallow with the combined passion of her outburst and Ursula’s increasing proximity to her person. Ursula knew that with one purpose-infused puff, she could be halfway reduced to being the other woman’s amphibious puppet, and she knew that Cruella knew it, too. It was in the furmonger’s mischievous blue eyes, always alert and rare to blink. Eyes Ursula had remembered at least once a day for the past thirty years, in twinges of wistful longing whenever her favorite moray at the aquarium (a haughty little fangtooth whom she had _not_ secretly called Cru-eel-la in her head) emerged from its rocky mantle, eager at the sight of her, knowing her presence meant food and a pleasing stroke to its prickly skin.

“But what difference does it make,” the sea witch asked, almost grazing Cruella’s red mouth with her own when she spoke, “if we’re always going to end up where he wants us to be anyway?”

“It makes all the difference,” Cruella murmured, angular body canting subtly forward when Ursula’s cool brown hands settled on her leather-clad hips, thumbs running affectionately over the prominent bones there. “It’s the game that’s rigged, not the players. If it doesn’t matter what we do, then I fully intend to do everything in my power to make myself as happy as possible between defeats. Because if I’m never going to be satisfied, at the very least I am going to be _quite frequently thrilled._ ”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ursula mused, and kissed her, slow and deep, tentacles tightening around her arms and Ursula could feel her pulse racing beneath them, could taste her skin through the suckers, a unique taste she was at a loss to describe as anything other than dry in the way of French vermouth, sort of boozy and woodsy and, for the past few days, a little bit salty, thanks to Ursula herself. “I think I can accomplish both.”

Cruella laughed, low and throaty and appreciatively breathless.

“Of course you can, my darling,” she purred, but her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. There was desire there, of course, and yearning and amusement, all unfeigned; but like the silver that backs a mirror, painted beneath that hyperbolized femme fatale façade Ursula caught a glimpse of the desperation Rumpelstiltskin had once scented alongside the gin, heard the flicker of vulnerability peeking out from behind the words Cruella spoke next: “Who needs an Author for a happy ending so long as I’ve you around?”

Ursula didn’t give voice to the implications in the question, possibilities as two-tone as her lover’s hair. They’d done this before and lost it. Like every scrap of joy they had ever managed to get a grip on, it had crumbled and fallen through their fingers like sand, like the shot glass in Regina’s fist the night before. Cruella was right: they did love fiercely. Perhaps too fiercely, in the way that a python’s embrace had only one outcome regardless of whether or not it had started out a hug.

But that would never stop them struggling to hold on to it, again and again and again. Like the tides they would ebb and flow, push and pull and wreck on the reefs that had grown over their sunken hearts, those remarkably delicate and devilishly dangerous things that cost men their lives even as they safely harbored secret worlds of subsurface vitality. One day, perhaps, they would be able to drop anchor there. One day their brittle but enduring definition of love might be recognized for what it was, and permitted by the powers that be.

Ursula wasn’t about to hold her breath until that came to pass, but then, she didn’t need to – and as long as Cruella was with her, neither would she.

“You know, we’ve got at least an hour before anyone gets back,” she pointed out.

Cruella arched a darkly painted eyebrow. “Waste not, want not.”

“You’re so hot when you’re practical.”

“Practicality’s overrated, darling. I’ll settle for nothing less than extravagance.”

“ _That,_ ” said Ursula, strong tentacles making easy work of lifting the other woman’s svelte form, “is something I can readily supply.”

Cruella obligingly wrapped her legs around Ursula’s waist, leather pants creaking with the stretch, and leaned in for another kiss.

“Then by all means, your Majesty, I await the royal treatment.”

Ursula grinned, and carried her in the direction of the nearest bedroom.


End file.
